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Kind: captions Language: en so I got asked this question this guy was like hey he dm’ me he goes Sean big fan um what the whatever the next sentence you type to me I’m going to do it or I’ll die trying and I was like okay and then he’s like he’s like I’m going to get to $110,000 a month of passive uh passive income profits after you know and you know I’m thinking either a I start a newsletter B I do this other thing and it was like all like kind of like stuff we either stuff we do or like top we talk about e-commerce newsletter or this other thing which one do you think is going to get me there the fastest or the best like which one’s the best path and I was like I don’t know dude those all seem pretty hard to get to 10K a month like you know if I if I wanted if your goal is really 10K a month um you know I don’t know a job will probably get you there but if let’s take that off the table for a second let’s assume you don’t want a job or you don’t have maybe the degree to get a six figure job I was like I would just do a productized service [Music] dude Sean so here’s the deal we are officially more we’re we’re popular enough that you have to get your podcast set up right so what I’m going to do is I talked to Ben we’re having someone come to your house and my house and they’re going to put a two camera setup so they’re going to like cut back and forth but you’ve got to make that room and they they’ll help you but you’re going to have to make that room look good and it’s got It’s going to be ready every time dude that’s great um also related to that I found a new house that I might move into that’s way nicer and I was like uh my main motivation was to make this podcast look better I was like you know I kind of look like a scrub on this podcast like you know like right now I don’t have my hair cut don’t have a beer trim don’t have my my room nice I was like if a 100,000 plus people consume this every time like I would never go out in front of a stadium like this like right I wouldn’t even let three friends come to my house and look at my office like this why do I let 100,000 people see the off see see the recording studio like this simply for convenience but uh there’s that also I found on have you ever used peace it’s like a Airbnb for rentals that are not houses like not necessarily houses to stay in it’s like just for a a venue and there’s a a place near me for 75 bucks an hour for recording podcast that’s like a two camera setup with a sick couch and stuff like that it would be great for inperson stuff but if we’re not in person you know just me sitting on a giant cat I’m going to do it I’ll come out there and we’ll finally do it Ben wanted me to come out there but I didn’t want to fly but whatever I’ll do it I was talking to HubSpot or someone and I was saying like hey yeah give us budget to make our studio nice cuz we’re like the lowest maintenance people you have I was like for example two weeks ago Sean recorded a podcast with literally just one airpod because he didn’t have a mic and the other airpod ran out of batteries so he just used his airpod and his laptop so like I think we’re due we we’re own one that’s hilarious um also what I was going to say oh there’s this guy I wish I could give him a shout out I don’t know what his name is but I kind of want to steal his idea so this guy has this course it’s an on demand course that is only about how to make your video camera go from like a before to an after and I was like oh this is the smartest course I’ve ever seen Ben knows his name I don’t think Ben you know his name yeah his name is Kevin Shen Kevin Shen yeah actually I shouldn’t shout bleep that out I’m gonna make a my own competitor course so bleep this guy out I’m I’m going to copy him no but I I your setup sucks it’s like it’s like a fat person given a course on how to lose weight yeah I’m the before story just waiting you see my ACT you’re the way before story there’s we all know there’s the way before there’s the before and then there’s the after I’m currently hit a before you should the way before was the one airpod recording on no microphone with no light uh yeah and we’re I’m going to do the after and then I’m just going to turn that into a it’s a on hour thing and just says here’s the thing to buy and then cuz here’s the problem I’ve watched a bunch of these YouTube tutorials and they’re like oh yeah go get the Sony A5 or you can get the A6 or you can get the d340 and it’s like all right well do which one and then you buy it and they’re like yeah just connect it to your computer and then okay see now it looks good I was like yeah but you like there was like seven things in between there that like everything went wrong and they’re like okay you know you want to there’s one guy who’s like there some people show you how to put your lights up or whatever but dude this is the new um like your webcam is the new face like is basically yeah it’s your suit it’s like what people see um like this one time this guy told me he goes he goes yeah dude I I he’s like I spent he’s like I got to go get my haircut I was like how much you spend on your haircut cuz I was like I he has nice hair and I was like it kind of made it sound like a big deal like I can’t do anything today I got to go get my haircut and I was like I just kind of like you know it’s like in the middle of another task I’m getting my haircut like that’s kind of how I yeah like if the Great Club just so happens to be in the mall that you’re at yeah exactly like which Super Cuts do you go to and he was like he was like yeah know I go to this one place she’s been cutting my hair for years I go I have a standing appointment and I was like damn dude you’re like really into your hair he goes your hair is like half of your face and I was like oh [ ] it’s so true yeah but you’re not into the other half either so it’s all good right like you don’t moisturize or anything I was like damn he’s right I’m just leaving 50% up to Super Cuts like that ain’t right like good hair is like an extra two inches of height as far as like you know that goes so anyways dude speaking of being talk speaking of being really good-looking did you see the tweet that happened today so this woman uh this like good-look woman and her good-look husband D hey hey she’s married dude they’re both handsome um they’re they’re they’re a beautiful couple and they uh she sent me this message basically and I shared the the screenshots on Twitter but basically a year ago you tweeted something I sent you the tweet I actually forget what do you remember what it was no I I didn’t see the Tweet what was the original tweet should be is it interesting does it matter uh she said it was like really cringe that she even replied to it in the first place but here I’ll pull it up so basically uh you said um I have zero interest in buying a fancy car you know what I want a personal in-house Chef I can’t think of a better way to spend money than a chef how do I start want how do I start getting one next week and she replied like hey hire me I’m a chef but I’ve got about 32 other skills uh whatever and this guy dm’d her and she said that they were just talking about like I guess the chef business or something like that uh yeah I mean it was clear what was going on in the get-go but he like she said she’s she sent me the first message and it just they were just like talking shooting the [ ] then like he’s like hey whatever the thing you were talking about I’m super interested tell me more about whatever that was well if he’s from Indi he’s from Indiana and she’s from Ireland and so she’s in Europe he’s in America and they start talking back and forth the DMS then they get on a call and she said they hit it off and after two weeks of just constant calls he booked a flight to Europe and for two weeks they they like had this great time and then now a year later so they uh she moved to America it’s been a year about since that tweet they’re getting married in a couple months and it was all because she said that she listened to MFM and read the hustle she started listening to this she started commenting on your stuff and my stuff he noticed that and then they like I think his Inn was like talking about like the Pod and like oh you like them too and uh it totally worked she sent me a picture of that they’re they’re both I mean they’re both tens It’s a good-looking couple so uh our new tagline is MFM getting you paid and laid Yeah there you go yeah and I I’m sure all of our listeners are as good-looking as them yeah I don’t think so but they uh they did a good job but I was I was shown this to my mom and I’m like see not it’s not just neck beards that listen to this like it’s actually like you know like real people who like shower and stuff but it looks good I’m happy for these people so shout out to them maybe we should do a date night every u nine months and we should just bring together listeners and it’s just speed dating and let’s just see what happens it’s going to be like like right like like you know Greg and Steve everyone’s going to be named like Chris and Tucker like it’s going to be all guys like so so only come if you’re looking for a man yeah you exactly yeah exactly see we got the tagline too so it’s perfect um that is a pretty cool moment though I’m glad that that happened that’s kind of crazy that that happened and uh but Ben uh producer Ben young producer Ben we need your story did you do anything bold when you met your wife did you like this guy I pretty bold move right slide into the DMS yeah figure out some excuse to call each other every day then book a flight go over there and fall in love get married that’s kind of amazing did either of you guys do any old moves uh we were set up on a blind date and it was my boss at the time CEO actually my boss’s boss’s boss CEO of the company I was working for um I ran into him one night and he was like oh do you know Katy Jowers you have to take her out and so he sent a text to both of us that was like it sounded like a work email he was like Katie I have CC Ben here he’s a great employee and we’ll take you on a nice date and I was like all right well guess I’m locked in why did he know that you should take her out a date are you was she Mormon too yeah yeah this was Utah so we’re all Mor everyone in the story is Mor and how tall is she she’s 5’11 well there that’s why he’s like you guys are both big tall white Mormons you should uh procreate again you’re describing everyone in the state of Utah though like the whole population is tall white Mormons you said it like it was a movie twist you’re like but here’s the thing I’m Mormon she was Mormon everybody story it’s like the end of the six sense it’s like he was a ghost and I’m a ghost this whole thing whole movie is about that’s awesome um so no no no no great DM sorry dude all right I have I have something interesting that I saw Sean I posted a link to this subreddit to to this Reddit post that I saw right before I logged into this uh to the podcast and I linked it to you so basically there’s this sub called fat fire that I like I’ve sent it to you and every once in a while you get these amazing stories about people because they reveal like their income and things like that and I’ve been following this lawyer he’s a 38y old explain what fat fire is yeah so fat don’t know what fat fire fire stands for financially independent retired early traditionally it’s like a movement of people who want to save like $500,000 to a million dollars and live off of like 30 or $40,000 a year that’s not exactly what it means but that’s like traditionally like with the stereotype fat means you want to retire and early and be financially independent but you want to be doing it fat so you want to like you know save like $20 million or something like that so you want to start a company sell it and retire and so it’s people who want to retire while they’re young and uh do it by still living living la lavishly and it sounds douchy but it’s actually quite interesting it’s all like entrepreneurs Bankers tech people who like work at a it’s just like rich people [ ] and which is always fun to like be voyerism old personal injury lawyer and for the past four years he’s given an update every couple of years and he explains everything that’s going on in his business and so his background is basically that he was a normal he went to a good school and then worked at one of the big law firms which is like something that you like grind for 80 hours a week and hopefully climb your way up and eventually you make a million dollars a year after 10 or 15 years but it’s kind of boring and you’re like kind of like the your boss’s [ ] for a long time and it just kind of sucks and so he goes you know what screw this a friend of his got hurt and he goes hey I’ll represent you uh just pay me whatever’s fair and then he did and he won and then a few other people started coming to him just word of mouth and so he was doing this in the evenings uh while he was still working his main job and after a year he quit to do his own thing that’s when his uh income from his Moonlighting became bigger than his normal thing so fast forward now um I believe it’s been about eight years since he’s been doing this so 2014 to 2022 and He’s listed out his income as well of his net worth breaking it down by assets for every single year so in year one it was $300,000 two 600,000 $800 ,000 1.2 million 3 million 5.6 million 6 million 6 million and this year so far 3.3 and it’s going to be 8 million this year and that’s personal income basically he he has these posts where he breaks down exactly how his businesses work what his current plan is what his growth challenges are what his marketing is and basically he’s got like five attorneys that work for him and he’s slowly built up to that he gets a little bit of cut of all that they have uh they have 300 cases that they do a year um he talks about grow challenges which is that they’re struggling with the CR they don’t have a CRM everything’s done manually manually and it’s a lot of work and one of his goal is goals is to automate a lot of stuff but it’s incredibly fascinating for two reasons one this is a sick business right like it’s like a just a 37y old smart person but he doesn’t seem like that particularly extraordinary but he’s like killing it now he says that his net worth is currently $5.8 million um in his kids have a trust front of 1.7 million and then secondly why this is cool for a couple reasons one Alex Heros had this business Alex Heros was a guest here he had this business called gym launch where he basically worked with gyms where he they you paid him 20 or $30,000 and he set up your whole CRM and he set up all the automated emails for onboarding and just kind of set up the automation flow some much you do that for these personal injury attorneys this is awesome they have way more money than Jims and there’s probably just as many of them I I have no idea but probably um I don’t know what do you think about this post it’s pretty cool right I can’t find this client info have you heard of HubSpot HubSpot is a CRM platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases HubSpot grow better this is great I don’t go on fatfire as much as you do um I do it from time to time but I don’t like I don’t know I need to like add it to my feed or whatever uh but yeah this is great 38 years old 15 million $15 million net worth not five uh so 15.8 uh and then the6 million annual income is actually the more stunning part like I’m not surprised that a lawyer at 40 can have 15 million in in net worth it’s the 6 million in annual income that’s sort of like stunning which makes me want to understand this personal injury lawyer business better like he says like you know I do no marketing I basically just hand out business cards plus I get referrals from my existing clients um but that is a ton that is a ton of like take-home from your like your legal practice I don’t think that’s common so I wonder what he’s doing that’s uncommon like he talks about look these cases basically like you know it’s not about more cases like 300 cases could end up being worth more than 3,000 cases because you you know you get paid based on the outcome you know the the profits of the of the cases but is that kind of weird like isn’t no I don’t think so This Guy’s in Southern California so maybe he’s in San Diego so it’s a pretty big city but I think if you look at the top 20 cities in America if you look at the Billboards it’s always personal injury uh lawyers and there’s this one guy in um in Austin in Austin’s like a top 15 City maybe and he says that his earnings are I I forget exactly what it says his earnings are but I looked him up on Instagram and he’s got a collection of like 15 Ferraris he was in the newspaper because he had a birthday party for his daughter or for himself and he had like Rod Stewart or someone crazy he spent like three million on that and they talked about his home and he was donating checks for2 or three million and that was in Austin uh his name was Thomas I think something Thomas and I think I know a personal injury attorney in St Louis and he’s got a mansion in Miami he’s got a place in St Louis where we’re from I mean I think some of these guys could could really roll in it and re netting 10 or 20 a year yeah this this is it’s wild and I like that idea of the the gym launch for X um I think you’re right with lawyers like I see this right now my my father-in-law has senior living facilities and he’s always like you know I’m like how’s Biz and he’s like oh it’s good or it’s bad but his thing is always just like you know we have a a 64 bed facility and every bed in the facility so like let’s say so this is like a a senior living Care Center so basically what he does his model is like he’ll buy one so say it has 32 beds but it’s permitted for up to up to 80 and just the current owner like doesn’t really have the motivation or the construction experience and so he’ll he just looks for that first he’s like all right you have a good business and I can expand I can just double the number of Beds which will double the net income of this roughly which will double the value of this property so if I’m buying it for four this will be worth to 10 by the time I’m done with it and I got to put in 2 million in construction just round numbers just for for argument sake then he has a management company that will actually like run the thing cuz I was like dude do you know how to run a senior living facility like isn’t that hard and weird and he’s like well like I don’t go there like I I hir this I found one really good property management company and they run all my properties and I was like wow okay she’s like yeah she’s been doing this for 30 years that’s what she does and like she you know she gets a cut um and then the other thing he was saying who’s like you know it’s all about occupancy right just like any Hospitality type of business you know every bed they pay us on average let’s say $6 to $8,000 per month um so you know if we just get like four more bookings you know these are that that adds an extra whatever you know $30,000 a month or whatever to our um to our Revenue which is which is great and so he what he’ll do is I’m like so every time I ask him how’s business going he’s just like uh it’s good we lost two clients uh you know we’re going to we’re going to place another one today and I’m like I’m like how do you get clients and he’s basically like oh you know we kind of like she networks with the hospitals they know her so they send her to people like do you advertise at all he’s like no how do I do that and I was like oh [ ] I was like like if somebody Google searches like you know senior living near me and like you’re your city name like do you come up he’s like no and there’s like these aggregators like these search engines that they like they SEO rank to the top um but I was like I feel like if you just did like dude I knew a guy who owned one of those search engines and he was making a couple million bucks a year and basically he would come up on top on Google and then sell the lead for $200 to your your guy and he would buy that lead and then hopefully close them to make 8,000 a month exactly and so I was like you should either be buying these leads you should set up some referral system you should take you know local newspaper ads local magazines like you know I don’t know got to do something on the marketing side and he’s just like I don’t know that like basically he looks at marketing the way I would look at what he says which is well like just do a renovation and like take it from 32 beds to 64 beds and then get the permits for the memory care from the city and then do this and that it’s like what like I got to read this manual and figure out like what color the elevator buttons need to be like I I’m out I just can’t do this I fail and like that’s what dude set up a Google AdWords account like feels like to him and so I think there’s that Arbitrage which is basically how many people are there that are injury lawyers Senior Living centers pool construction companies that just simply don’t know digital marketing and like can you build a either a lead gen business or go like consult and help them and like take a share of the increase in Revenue like gym launch it just seems like that is one of like um that is one of the easiest ways to do it and then he’s like he’s like I’m going to get to $10,000 a month of passive uh passive income profits after you know and you know I’m thinking either a I start a newsletter B I do this other thing and it was like all like kind of like stuff we do either stuff we do or like topics we talk about e-commerce newsletter or this other thing which one do you think is going to get me there the fastest or the best like which one’s the best path and I was like I don’t know dude those all seem pretty hard to get to 10K a month like you know if I if I wanted if your goal is is really 10K a month um you know I don’t know a job will’ll probably get you there but if let’s take that off the table for a second let’s assume you don’t want a job or you don’t have maybe the degree to get a sixf figure job I was like I would just do a productized service he’s like what does that mean I was like okay even just skip product tize just a service I was like you totally basically find one niche of a business and figure out how what you can do that helps them make more money so I was like maybe it’s just email marketing services for e-commerce companies maybe it’s lead gen for pool construction companies maybe it’s um you know this it’s like you know the the gym launch Playbook where it’s like yeah I’ll just do sales calls for you and like I’ll help you close X you know new customers every month or you know I’ll make your website convert 1% better you know through a series of experiments and you pay me a flat fee of four four grand a month and like that 1% for you is going to be worth at least 10x more than that you know these are the simplest things I was like and then what do you do how do you get clients like let’s assume you don’t have any money you create content that just talks about like for example if you’re doing conversion rate optimization for an e-commerce store you just post check out what these guys do in their ad to cart you know in their cart shopping cart that inove improves conversion by 8% check out what these guys do with their email pop-up check out what these guys do with their checkout buttons and we did this change and this changed this percent or like here’s a collection of the best you know whatever uh designs for landing pages and people will see that and they’ll be like oh yeah smart and they’ll one time you do it they’ll be like H that’s smart the second time they’ll be like those are smart third time you do it they’ll be like he’s smart let me just hire this guy like I just want this problem solved and like you could do that and you can get to 10 20 30k a month of profit and that is a way better path than like I think what most people think about doing instead yeah and also I hate that question because I get that all the time too I’m like I don’t [ ] know man what are you good at like I I you know I I don’t know like go play in the NBA like I I I have to know like what your attributes are I hate that question I’m just like you know what I mean it’s the stupidest question ever I cannot stand that because they just want me to like tell them what to do you like that one they just want me to tell tell them what to do but when you have zero context it’s just useless bull crap advice yeah I I I could see that but also I don’t know I kind of empathize like I empathize but I think it’s stupid I can I can I can understand why you ask that and think it’s stupid I understand why you’re doing this stupid thing I totally get it yeah I I would have I asked that question too and now I know it’s it’s not the right question yeah but then you got to follow up with what is the right question well you just need more context you know um oh who’s stupid now who’s stupid now stupid I never said I wasn’t either dude did you know that Elon do you know Elon Musk has a sister what what kind of amazing subject change is that uh no I didn’t know that I only knew about Kimble musk okay well she elon’s got a sister and she owns this thing called passionflix.com it’s basically like uh audio erotica I believe like like like you know like uh uh it’s the tagline is I’m familiar yeah the video guy myself but all right I guess you can always close the tab just listen the subject or the tagline is Passion flicks get your passion on romance on demand for $6 a month and uh it’s basically romance novels which we had talked about uh in your ears I guess like audio books um but you know do we do we get credit for this like does el mus sister listen to the podc because we’ve been talking about this for a long time and you I think you should tell the story again cuz the pod’s much bigger than the first time tell your story about the romance novel thing tell first the story about how you did it for the hustled as a marketing stunt and then what you did with uh with our buddy all right so for the hustle when we the very first article we ever launched we had to come out with a bang and I knew this guy who basically would plagiarize others PE other people’s books on how to sleep with women and he would get a Filipino to rewrite it to it pass the Kindle plagiarism like filter and then he would game it by buying reviews and he was making 50 to $60,000 a month and like I would joke with him but I was like dude a this is super unethical and B you don’t even sleep with women like you don’t know anything about this topic I can’t believe you’re like living this lie but whatever he was making money and so we wrote an article about that when it first came out and to prove that it was legit because a lot of people didn’t believe us we go fine watch we’re going to copy this and do and do it and instead of doing in like the hot to sleep with women category uh we did it for romance Cate the romance category because if you look at the the the liquidity of the marketplace on Amazon romance novels has the most amount of buyers and also like the most amount of transactions like these women are always buying this stuff and so we like looked at like what the popular categories were and there was like women who want to have sex with like a werewolf there was like women who want to have sex with um like military people and so we made like a like a fantasies right yeah so we made military guy a rich billionaire guy right that’s 50 Shades of Gray a vampire that’s Twilight right that that’s how fantasy vampire that’s so we made like a military vampire werewolf guy we like combined all of them and then we found like like the t is that really what you did yeah well we found we did that for the title so we found a book that was good and we just like plagiarized it and then like made the title like in the description about like a vampire werewolf military guy billionaire I forget like it was like a joke we did all of them and then we gained the system so in a couple weeks or in a week we were the number one best-selling in a particular category and we like changed our LinkedIn to like bestselling author and uh CU because we were like how do we get like speaking gigs now and which I didn’t know at the time but we actually plagiarized the largest romance publisher in the world Harley Quinn books and they called us I thought they were going to like sue us because they sent this angry email and and and then in the email or on the call they’re like look we get it you’re you’re you’re making you’re not really making fun of romance novels you’re making fun of this like Kindle thing which we agree is silly but you and you use us an example no big deal we get it but you got to take it down so we took it down so whatever and so I’ve always been curious about this industry and so about two years ago three maybe three years ago my friend Ramon and I we created this website called captivating oh no what was it called the first book was called captivating CLA uh what was this that was the book of the book that we launched captivating CLA what was the book was it a short boo romantic we launched a website called short boo romantic. wordpress.com and we basically we got someone on Fiverr we got someone on short but romantic. wordpress.com is the least short and least romantic doain you could possibly have chosen yeah it was horrible and and so we uh we created short but romantic and we and we got someone on Fiverr to write like a part one of like a like a sexy story thing like I frankly I didn’t even read it and then we got another Fiverr guy to narrate it and then we put it on the website and we said part one of like captivating CLA or whatever it was and it was like read the story and then at the end it said do you want part two sign up here for $25 a month and we’ll send one of you one of these every single day and we put ads on Facebook for it and I made like U I found like this girl that I went to college with and I was like hey can I use your face on this uh this website and act like you’re the author and like you’re the one behind it because it wouldn’t look good if it was me and so we did and we got like $500 in Revenue in like 12 hours because the ad rate was crazy and if you went to the website people were commenting on this saying like this story is amazing I love this I want more of this you saw it right yeah I remember the I remember seeing the Prototype and I it was like dude Sam is a genius man like I love how you spin these things up I love the names that you pick I love the like the speed to Pro speed to launch um I love the way that you did the test which was most people would go and spend months trying to find an author and write a book and you were like you know you just were like okay where wolf military uh you know blonde girl named Claire Claire wants to feel uh captured no Claire wants to feel you know contemplated no captivated yes sorry captivating Claire um Claire wears a red dress and she bumps into this billionaire and his hand grazes her thigh and that’s it we got it all right we’re working now like I just see I saw the website and I just saw your fingerprints all over so I was like I remember being so impressed and I tried we invested in our buddy for this cuz I was like dude this is a great Market to be in and if you’re kind of grow hacky you’re going to do this and nobody else is doing this right it was like there’s so little competition cuz most most serious people could never bring themselves to do this so it’s just you’re going to compete with the other not so serious people that are out there on Earth and like I would put our skills up there with any of them yeah absolutely and it was a good idea actually but the thing that was the the thing that was the thing was like I don’t give a [ ] about this neither did he you know like this was exactly what we weren’t exactly fueled by this uh passion to create these like sex novels and so we kind of like shut it down but a listener a podcast listener did something like this and he spun it up I think to 10,000 in Revenue a month like really fast right yeah that’s what I think so and then also um there was a difference I think there’s a difference between like literal audio porn and then like romance novels and this I think passion flicks the El what Elon musk’s sister is doing is the uh the romance novels uh on demand $5.99 a month so I actually think this is a great idea um you know I I B I think there’s a great idea if you’re good at internet marketing and you’re like you know got a good sort of sense of humor about yourself I think that this is a uh a business that will work if you apply enough pressure it’s hard though to like stay excited about it for a long time unless you just love selling widgets in fact our buddy Ramone the first time I met him you introduce me to him we go out to a lunch he’s telling me his life story and his life story is full of like substance it’s like you know I was raised in the Netherlands and then like you know I had this I was kind of like out on my own at a young age and then like I have I’m a single father to my son and blah blah blah like whatever he know had a bunch of things that were like you know these Journeys throughout his life lifetime that were like you know these these meing you I train MMA like he seemed like a dude who like you know he really kind of like you know was self-made in many ways and then I was like so do you like I kind of expected him to be like you know so that’s why I’m working on this thing that has like this deep meaning also and and I was like so what was your last business he’s like oh um created a soap opera blog and I sold it for $10 million and I was like what I was like cuz you love soap opers he’s like no never seen one in my life I was like what the hell and I was like how did this work he’s like and there’s a he’s the second episode of this podcast so if you scroll all the way back to the second episode I think it’s Ramone it’s one of the best episodes ever that’s been on the Pod fast feed but basically he’s like yeah I just went on Facebook and there was an Arbitrage opportunity where like you could buy Facebook page likes Facebook wanted to promote pages so you could get you could advertise a page for like you could get a like for like a Cent and I just figured out oh cool once I get them to like my page I could post a link then I’ll get them to my website and like okay that cost like seven cents to get them to my website and then Google AdSense can give me 9 cents or 12 cents or whatever like there’s some like money Arbitrage there so he’s like so then I just had to figure out what is the um you know what’s the best categories like so I spun up like 22 Facebook pages about every Niche I could think of and yeah his Niche it was like it was like WWF wrestling and like soccer and like politics and just a bunch of crazy stuff yeah every interest you could think of and he’s like okay which one’s the best and he said the top three I think were wrestling uh no number one was like right-wing conservative politics which you know turned out to be like what Facebook you know really really like overran Facebook also and he was like I just don’t want to do this it doesn’t make anyone happy yeah yeah so that one he’s like all right I’m going to scratch that out he goes then the next two are wrestling and soap operas and he’s like all right let’s do soap wrestling he never really told me that part but whatever so uh details so he he’s like all right well what do people care about they care about like spoilers like what’s going to happen on tomorrow’s Days of Our Lives and it turns out you could just like buy or like you could just sign up to get the like the sneak peek of like the synopsis of what happens tomorrow and he would just like publish that as a long form thing and he’d have hired some people to write for it and so some women were writing for this stuff whatever so he was doing that and he ends up selling the thing for 10 million in cash basically it was making like 3 400,000 a month in profit it was very profitable yeah and so you you you met him he he reached out to you from the hustle he goes uh here’s my story you know I want to tell it and you were like no way this sounds fake and he’s like well here’s my analytics and here’s my bank account like go ahead look and you were like what and you guys met you you guys like best friends so you introduced me you’re like hey you and the email you go Sean meet rone and and you’re like uh Sean’s a good buddy smart guy nice like you know normal intro stuff yeah like SE this is Ramone I trust Ramone with my life like wow incredible incred int how do you remember that and because it’s it stuck out to me right it was like so I don’t know this is one of those writing things I’m like wow that was amazing and then I met Ramon and I also now trust Ramone in my life he’s just that kind of guy and so he told me at that meeting he goes I was like so you just you just you’ll just work on whatever or like for your next thing you know you going do something like soap propers or whatever he goes you see this cup and there like a little like you know at a restaurant the water cups are the shitty plastic ones he goes um if I could just move this cup from here to here and it’s like I make 10 I make a dollar doing that then I’m the I’m a cup salesman like he’s basically I’ll sell anything like and so what ended up happening was he was going to do this romance thing and you I spun up this test and it started to work and um but one of his other businesses that he had bought was like started to work even better and so he just kind of he tried to do both for a little while but he’s like and that other one was equally as weird it was a dog ramp business for weener dogs so they can get on the couch yeah actually it’s even worse than the plastic cup he’s like do you have a Wier dog no oh well if you did you know that if they tried to jump on or off the they could get hurt I I guess so yeah we Mak we making sell ramps for weener dogs to get it on and off the bed I was like what and he was like yeah we’ll do like you know 7 million this year I was like what the hell and so you know then that business grew like crazy or whatever um and so I was like wow this guy is like you know this guy he was just so different than everybody else in Silicon Valley I loved it I loved how different he was he lived here but it was like an alien living in Silicon Valley like he just did not have anything to do with software or venture capital or like Hightech stuff he was literally like a like a cup salesman W wandering around Sil Valley making millions of dollars selling like the most arbitrary like you know gadgets like you know fidget Spinners to to you know like elderly when I first met him um he was wearing like sweatpants and like a shirt with holes in it and like old Jordans and I was and he’s like a huge like big white dude and I’m like and he has an accent you know and I talking to him like what who is this guy and we start walking back to his car um cuz I was going back to my office and I was walking to his car and I see he had a brand new Tesla at the time the nicest fanciest Tesla it was like $150,000 I was like oh sick car he go he was like thanks bro had a pay all cash for it cuz I don’t have a credit score and I was like what I guess you’re legit yeah and we we make him sound braggy but he is the opposite braggy like he’ll just be like like he’ll just show up with something or like like I don’t know like he’ll do something that you’re like that makes no sense whatsoever and then when you dig in it’s because he like always takes the hard weird path to do stuff in this hilarious way and it’s what makes him incredible I love it yeah he’s crazy um like he he got diagnosed with like a herniated disc and then like on the way home from the doctor like signed up for an Iron Man and it’s like what are you doing why are you choosing this I did the Iron Man with why must you choose violence I did the Iron Man with him it was me him and suie and um meron literally got last he got last that they he he was so slow that he didn’t train at all he just showed up and when he got and when he showed up he had this bike and he was like hey could someone show me how I use these shoes that clip into the pedals like he didn’t know how to like he was like riding his bike for like the first time like taking the tag off of it and uh it’s Iron Man it’s really hard and he got dead last but he finished like it like there was there like the golf cart was rolling behind him and it was getting dark at night and they were going to try they were about to pull him off the course but he like pushed him off he goes I’m finishing oh that’s incredible um all right Let’s do let’s do some other ones I got some uh okay I got I got an idea and then a really I got a bad idea that I have and then a really good idea for a company that I just heard about which one do you want the good one I would like the got a bad one and a better one do you want the better or the bad all right so the great one there’s a company called ghost um that I just heard about so this story to me is kind of incredible so if you go to compor no it’s a new one so GST G sorry GH St so it’s ghost without the O um I think it’s ghost .io is the name of it oh this is already too too new age for me I’m out no no no you’re going to you’re going to appreciate this you’re going to you’re out but I’m G bring you back in here’s the so I heard about this because uh this guy who’s like a VC somewhere he goes back in 2020 um our team started to notice a big shift that was going on with like stores like Walmart Target like any big store was that basically remember when Co happened and like the supply chain shut down and like the [ ] ship got stuck in the canal and like everything was just bad like shipping container prices went through the roof and so everybody had like a shortage right when demand went like through the roof because everybody was at home everybody was ordering tons of products and um we were all getting stimulus checks and stuff like that right so that’s like demand went way up to shop because people couldn’t go do experiences and Supply went way down and it was like this crazy situation and so what happened was retailers basically they ordered more to try to catch up cuz nobody knew how long the pandemic and stuff would go and also like the stuff that got delayed like finally showed up and what that created was like this huge glut of excess inventory over a trillion dollars of excess inventory was kind of like the uh the guess and so These Guys these these Adventure C sort of notice this trend and they posted this 26-page PDF called the inventory apocalypse is coming and they were just like look we are looking at this like a combination of people returning things the supply chain glut and then Brands over ordering to try to keep up with like this the EXP explosion in e-commerce right like um there’s just too much inventory on hand and this is all playing out now like that was in 2020 2021 something like that now in 2022 if you go look there’s these amazing charts of like all if you notice all the every brand is like discounting like crazy right now they’re like oh 40% off summer sale semiannual sale like liquidation whatever and it’s because everybody has way too much inventory to hold and so um and like Target and Walmart I think have come out and said some crazy public number Ben see if you could find it like how much excess inventory is on the Shelf it’s some absurd number so anyways these guys put this out and at the same time this startup gets started by this guy Josh and d and um and and D is kind of well known in like the kind of like e-commerce World um and so they they go and they start this company basically what they do is they they’re creating like a Marketplace or a clearing house so any it’s called ghost because it’s like any retailer rather than doing a huge discount which kind of like it kind of cheapens your brand it sort of just pulls forward Revenue that like your customers probably would have spent full price but like in order to move inventory you kind of like you you gave it away cheaper and you you know you sort of eroded your premium uh prices or whatever um it basically connects them to the Liquidators of the world so there’s like uh TJ Maxx Ross Marshalls like those types of companies but there’s also just like International versions of those companies there’s like boutiques and and wholesalers that could carry your stuff uh there’s basically like a way to like get rid of inventory that’s on your shelf that you’re directly selling and you could sell it wholesale for somebody else to kind of move you’ll take a discount with them and that’s better than giving a discount to your customers who like then they’ll get trained to expect and wait for 30 40% discounts rather than paying the premium price I’m back in so this is awesome dude their I knew you come back in their site has five words on it and it’s beautiful I look at their site and it’s literally five words we make your inventory disappear and the but the way that it looks I love it and there’s like a a a smoky cloud like a go like a like something evaporated right behind yeah and then basically what it seems like what they’re doing is they’re creating a private Marketplace so this is key right like it’s got to be private can’t be public and it’s a Marketplace between your retailer who has excess inventory and these wholesalers and Liquidators who will take this sort of like excess inventory they’ll pay you know they’ll get it at a huge discount and then they’ll flip it on their own that’s their business so it’s kind connecting these two through um through this B2B Marketplace and I think the thing is growing like crazy so I think they said um let’s see in the first year I believe they got to um multi-million dollar net revenue so not gmv uh profitably and they’re like not even launched yet like you got to like sign up to do a demo and [ ] like that with them but just knowing what I know about like what’s going on in e-commerce I could tell you this thing is going to be big like I need to chase these guys down to go invest in this because this is a real problem and marketplaces are the best type of internet business but like you it sort of feels like all the it’s like all the good ones are T all the good guys are taken it’s like oh all the good marketplaces are taken like someone did it for you know Amazon did it for this eBay did it for that you know Etsy does it for crafts it sort of feels like there’s no marketplaces left I think this could be one of those multi-billion dollar marketplaces that comes out well it’s not a Marketplace it’s just software isn’t it no it’s a Marketplace they’re connecting buyers and sellers they’re connecting the all the retailers but so the the fee they don’t charge a fee to the people for using their software it’s it’s just they’ll set it up for free which is probably it’s a huge integration process they set it up for free and then they make the transaction they make a a transaction fee that’s my guess so I think it’s probably similar I think one of the closest analogies is a company called Fair which also does something similar so fair is like I have an e-commerce brand I want other retailers like you know Suzy’s uh you know gift shop to carry my product well it’d be consum time consuming to go find all the sus Corner shops contact them sell them my services create purchase orders and like manage that whole thing so fair created a Marketplace to do that and it’s a like 10 billion dollar company or something like that it’s like one of the one of the faster growing startups that exists um this is doing that but more on the like larger Liquidator types like more like the TJ Maxx Ross like uh types versus um you know just like kind of so and so’s Boutique shop that wants to carry your stuff dude this is sick yeah you’re right I’m in this is actually amazing um I’m eager to see how this plays out there’s nothing on on the internet about him though so like when I research it I can’t find a thing yeah I think they literally just came out of stealth yesterday basically so um that’s that’s how we saw it um let me tell you okay now can I tell you my bad idea it’s also in the e-commerce space so how do I want to put this let me sell you let me sell you on this let me turn on the charm a little bit Sam you’re a goodlooking dude um in fact I would say whatever you wear tends to look good I feel like if I almost wore that same shirt it wouldn’t look as good right because you got the body you don’t need you don’t need to go pay you know crazy amounts of money at you know whatever Scotch and Soda our favorite brand here at my first million you don’t got to go pay for the fancy stuff because honestly if you dress in basic blacks and whites neutral colors um you’ll look good and in fact there are a lot of people that are out there that may not be as fit as you but they do subscribe the same philosophy which is they kind of just want to opt out of the fashion game like I went to Lululemon to go I just wanted something that’s high quality that fits well and I went and I found a pair of shorts and a and a T-shirt and um the shorts were $85 and the T-shirt was like you know whatever $77 for one right and so if I just wanted to have really awesome Basics like high quality Basics that are um premium premium like material and fit but uh I don’t care about the brand name I’m not looking for the status uh where would I go today to get that do you have a a place in mind where I might go for something like that for plain t-shirts clean fresh teas those are my fave $10 t-shirts that fit pretty good and that’s mostly it for for for basic [ ] and so there’s there’s that there’s like let’s say italic I think italic does this with uh I think I don’t know if you’re also an investor in tallic I am but like they do it with cool stuff like handbags and scar and like a lot of designery type of stuff it’s like a wider selection but I think that somebody can go create the Costco for clothes and what do I mean by this I think you could create a business model that flips it on its head instead of paying the 4X 5x 6X 7x markup that you pay today when you go buy a shirt and you buy a shirt for $25 that shirt probably cost $5 to make is that true and so yeah so you’re gonna you’re I think on average you’re gonna be paying some between something between 3 and 4x is like a normal markup and then if you once you get into like Lululemon and luxury you’re going to be paying more like probably 6 or 7x is my guess here um they’re public so you could go find their their actual like margins but like let’s assume that’s what about like a Louis Vuitton thing what about like a $500 Gucci shirt th those are different you’re buying those literally for the status um so let’s let’s put them as a separate category I’m focusing on more of like you go buy something from Nike or from Lululemon or Alo yoga or like whatever these brands that are like you’re just trying to have a high quality version of a of a fairly basic uh thing but there’s like some status component what I’m saying is let’s strip away the status so I’m saying basic girl stuff yeah you create a company called neutral and neutral basically just it opts out of the fashion game it says first of all I don’t need your status I don’t need your brand name second of all I don’t need your fancy designs third I don’t need to pay 5x markups because what a waste like what if I just want to pay for the actual cost of the goods so what it is it’s a membership like Costco where Costco’s model is you pay whatever 100 something is bucks a year for the membership and then they give you all the groceries at Cost Plus 10% and the 10% is just their like the labor and the stocking and the the stuff it takes to actually like move the goods around um and so because of that you get incredible value out of Costco moms love shopping at Costco for that reason uh they’re not sacrificing on quality they just are sacrificing on the fluff the the packaging The Branding the shelves the store experience and they say screw that I don’t need to have a fancy display in the store I don’t need to have fancy packaging like just give me the stuff raw um I’ll pay the the actual Goods Cost Plus 10% and I’ll pay you the membership fee because hey for me I make back the membership fee within you know my first month or two of shopping with you I think somebody could do that with all basics for clothing and just say we’re going to go get the same quality as like whatever the highest quality you know fit and and materials are for like you know these fancy little lemon type Brands and just provide it at the actual cost so You’ be buying like that same shirt for for $ eight or $9 and it’s a step up from like hannes and H&M or whatever but you’re getting it at and you and the marketing is that hey you’re paying nothing for the brand name in fact there’s no brand on this it’s like brand list right um all you got to do is pay the membership fee and make this happen now the counterargument is there was a company that tried to do this called brand lless they tried to do it like home and [ ] like that they went business I think that was harder I think I think it I think it’s amazing I think the problem there’s basically like I asked myself like two or three questions when I’m like looking at which projects to start the the it’s basically like do people want this and can I pull it off this one falls into the second category do people want this yeah obviously it’s not going to be hard to get people to buy this [ ] can I possibly pull that off that sounds so challenging like your experience seems challenging uh pulling it off like what like getting the products like just the logistics of the having tons and tons of SKS um like that seems really hard uh trying to get members to sign up profitably seems a bit of a challenge is uh italic able to get uh to do they have any profit or no uh I mean I can’t really say if they have profit or not but like you know they’re doing well and they’re growing so they are getting members to sign up uh people are are buying into the value proposition they’re retaining the question is like you know there’s some payback period and is that you know if that payback period is like you know one month wow this is one of the best businesses ever if it’s 12 months okay you know it’s going to be it’s going to be more cash intensive type business you have an e-com company do you think would you ever work on this I wouldn’t work on it just because knowing what I know now about e-commerce I’m like oh there’s easier ways to win but if I was going to work in e-commerce I think an idea like this is a better idea than 99% of e-commerce ideas because I think you’ll end up with subscription Revenue I think you’re differentiated and I think you appeal to the lowest common denominator so you’re like you’re not uh like everybody needs shirts so like there’s some Brands like cuts and fresh clean teas these brands have scaled to like a 100 million plus in Revenue in I don’t know three or four years and you look at it you’re like dude really it’s just a t-shirt brand and they’re doing just the t-shirts like you know well like this they’re not offering at the factory cost and they’re not offering it on subscription right so that’s the key difference here but the fact that they’ve been able to scale that much without it to me is like extremely impressive and it just sort of speaks to the fact that like everybody needs shirts and it’s like an everybody problem whereas like like my e-commerce or like we talked about Ramon’s dog ramp thing like that only works if you have not only a dog but a small dog not even really a small dog like a small dog that might get hurt and can’t get up and downstairs or a bed very easily and you want that dog in that applies to me that applies to me like I have three of alpa’s ramps in my house because like my dog is like this tiny little baby dog you have like this massive self-sufficient dog that like you know has like a college degree so like you your dog doesn’t need like a hand me down to like like a ramp to like you know get help him up uh you know onto a couch sorry dude my dog dog doesn’t even drink water from a bowl I have to like carry her to the sink and I my hand is a small bowl my hand is a small bowl and she drinks only freshh water from my hand dude just give it outside for a week it’ll toughen up like that’s crazy that you do this [ ] man how are you so soft dude you uh you just interviewed this guy Rich Roll who like does all these interviews and [ ] and you’re like you’re like the least like you don’t even leave your house yeah he like he was like yeah I did this competition it was uh you know fantastic challenge 300 mile run across three nights and like I was like what like I was like I went to Target last week yeah like no I didn’t I inst guarded from Target last week but like I had to step foot outside to bring the groceries into my home and it was like My toe got a little cold that’s fing hilarious how are your dogs that bad uh you know what you know like dogs start to look like their owner like you know my dog is like a spoiled little brat and I’m a spoil a little brat about life too I don’t know it’s good we we we suit Each Other Well when my dog was young uh like every once in a while like I would just be like I’m just not going to feed you until you behave like and it worked dude my dog doesn’t eat dog food nor does she eat like chicken or like anything that normal my dog only eats Clover 4% cottage cheese that’s freshly scooped into her bowl mixed with a little bit of dog food with an appetizer bone before it she won’t eat if you if you don’t do that she’s like cool I’ll die like I’ll just die if you’re fine blood’s on your hands if you just want me to die like she’ll go five days without eating unless she gets her cottage cheese oh my God that’s your fault that this is crazy I can’t believe you for sure it’s my fault how old is a dog when’s it when will it die oh whoa bro come on I mean like how long like how long when will it die how long will you own this animal for forever a 100 years that’s how long I’m going to own my dog dude my dog is getting close to dying and I’m going to be hilarious but I’m getting his I’m getting his face tattooed on me and I’m just I’m GNA have a tattoo of a massive Pitbull face on my body and I think it’s going to be like the greatest thing ever they’re GNA like people are going I’m just gonna be like this this like walking walking like what the [ ] are you like this like yepy bougie Tech guy with pull tattoos on them I’m going to be like driving people are going to be like they’re not going to know what to think it’s going to be wonderful yeah that’s going to be not even in your bottom three worst [Laughter] tattoos we’re acted like 12y olds we should leave we should leave yeah B you got to just stop the recording when we cross whatever that line is you got to just be like like we won’t even real that it stopped recording just don’t worry for your own good I catch you guys off like I the elementary school teacher like Sam we took a gold gold star off your chart after that comment yeah by the way you weren’t here the other day Ben and we were like talking about something and we were like [ ] this sucks without Ben like our moral compass we don’t know if this is right or wrong keeping you guys on the straight and narrow all right well what do we think I think that was pretty good